Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879): An Influential Woman

In the American Folk Art Museum on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, I went to a fascinating exhibit, “An Ecology of Quilts: The Natural History of American Textiles.” This is an exhibit “exploring the environmental and social impact of cultivating and harvesting raw materials; the networks of overland and ocean trade required to transport dyestuffs, fibers, and fabrics; and the technologies and industrial techniques developed to process them, such as the cotton gin—all of which allowed quiltmaking to flourish as a quintessential American art form.”

I found a plaque on the wall titled “Women and Botanical Knowledge” which discussed how in the 19th-century, sciences were prohibited to women, seeming unfeminine, except for Botany. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, a woman educator of the time period who was also a Botanist, wrote, “The study of Botany seems peculiarly adapted to females; the objects of its investigation are beautiful and delicate; its pursuit leading to exercise in the open air is conducive to health and cheerfulness.”

The plaque goes on to discuss the symbolic language of flowers and mentions popular books such as Flora’s Interpreter (1832) by Sarah Josepha Hale “an activist, author and editor of the famed women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book.”

My interest was piqued. I had never heard of Sarah Josepha Hale. When I surveyed friends, many of them had. I wanted to know more. I thought I was looking up a “lady scientist,” one who illustrated her botanical books with lovely artwork. I had no idea what I was in for. Sarah Josepha Hale was a powerhouse. A woman of enormous influence, not only among women but politically, socially, and culturally. She set the bar for what women were wearing, how they kept their homes and economized their kitchens, what got published and what didn’t. She also crusaded for many social causes, including erecting monuments, social outreach programs for women and, most of all, advocated ceaselessly for the education of women.

As for Flora’s Interpreter, it turns out that she did not write it. She constructed that book, collecting poems and the meanings of flowers from other sources.

I was unable to get my hands on a printed copy, so I ordered one on my Kindle, which is a photocopy of a printed version that was impossible to read. The print was so tiny. I did  manage to see a sort of divination system with flowers in the back. This section is the work of Sarah Josepha Hale. She added this delightful “mystical” part titled: Flora’s Fortuna in a subsequent edition of the book. This was my first introduction to the boundless ingenuity of Sarah Josepha Hale.

Luckily, I was able to find both books in the Internet Archive where I could actually read the print.

Here is the link to Flora’s Interpreter: https://archive.org/details/florasinterprete1832hale/page/n9/mode/2up

In the introduction to the 1832 edition, Hale writes:

“Making a book (not writing it) is somewhat like preparing a dinner, the ingredients must be collected from many places, and these are usually so disguised by the preparation that little of the original flavor remains. I must not, however, omit to name “Flora’s Dictionary,” and the “Garland of Flowers.” I have derived considerable assistance from these compilations and would tender my sincere thanks to their amiable authors”(v).

Each entry has poetry about said flower, its class and order, location and “sentiment.”

Then I found an edition on the Internet Archive that included Flora’s Fortuna and received more clarity on what she had created: A divination system with flowers, birth months, dates and temperaments. One can use it to understand themself but also to send encoded messages to friends or lovers with particular flower choices. The receiver could decode the message with their own copy of Flora’s Fortuna.

“The manner of proceeding is this:—When you wish to ascertain the particular flowers that best designate your condition, character, and probably success in life, look for the month in which you were born, . . . against the day of the month is your natal flower. Then ascertain to which of the temperaments your constitution is nearest assimilated; . . . The flower which governs the month is called your flower of destiny. . .Heaven gives us opportunity; their improvement or neglect is our work”(253-254).

You can check out your own flower fortune and have lots of fun here: https://archive.org/details/florasinterprete00hale/page/272/mode/1up

The “Lady Editor”

Sarah Josepha Hale authored more than 50 books, including novels, poetry, and cookbooks, and was a prominent editor for 40 years. As stated earlier, she worked hard to promote the education of women, having a hand in many of the colleges that were forming for women, including Vassar. She was also an activist for working women and single mothers.

Oh, by the way, she also wrote the poem, “Mary had a Little Lamb,” and is said to be “the woman who saved Thanksgiving.”

Hale was born in Newport, New Hampshire in 1788. Her parents believed in educating girls but she was not permitted in colleges at that time, so her brother shared his curriculum from Dartmouth with her. She earned an equal degree although silently and with no official papers.

Her husband died in 1822, leaving her with five children she raised on her own.

After her novel Northwood: Life North and South (1827) did well, she was offered the editorship of Ladies’ Magazine, which she eventually renamed American Ladies’ Magazine and which eventually became Godey’s Lady’s Book.

“All the auspices were favorable for Sarah Josepha Hale as she set vigorously to work. “My first object was to promote the education of my own sex,” she wrote. She worked hard month after month, contributing herself nearly half of the poetry, fiction, and articles in the Ladies’ Magazine”(Fryatt 26).

She was friends with Emma Willard, who had a female seminary in Troy, N.Y., where she offered science classes “more advanced even than those available at some colleges for men”(Fryatt 24). She also supported Miss Fiske’s school for women in Keene, N.H. and promoted  Elizabeth Blackwell’s quest to go to medical school in Godey’s. When Vassar College was being established, she was upset that there were no women executives in the organization and lobbied to change that.

Read Nasty Women Writers’ post, The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women—and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (2021)

When the prominent publisher Louis Godey wanted to improve his own women’s magazine called Lady’s Book, he grabbed Hale for the job of editor by acquiring the American Ladies’ Magazine.

“A marked improvement in the content of the Lady’s Book was noticeable as soon as Sarah Hale took up the editorial reins in Philadelphia”(Fryatt 69).

Godey’s was known for paying writers well, and Hale to be very discerning in her content. It also didn’t allow other magazines to “snatch and republish” which writers liked.

In her time as editor, she worked hard to promote American writers, especially women writers. She was extremely well connected from her years as a prominent editor. Many writers wanted to work with her.

It was a time where women were finding their voices and power in a new way through temperance, spiritualism, suffrage, abolition, and beginning to speak in public. Many women were becoming writers. Alice B. Neal was a contributor, and Eliza Leslie another editor. Hale also published Lydia H. Sigourney, one of the most popular writers of the day who also served as co-editor for a year.

Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne famously complained at the time of a “mob of scribbling women” but, Fryatt writes:

“After years of pent-up talents, women at last seemed to be bursting their bonds. Their creative powers would be expressed! Not only was there a psychological need for self-realization, long felt, but there was an economic need, too. The horizon for women’s work had to be expanded. Women found that men did not always prove to be the strong “protectors” they had been led to believe in. Men’s business judgment could be lacking, their trust in a partner misplaced, men could be deceived and deceitful, cruel and tyrannical. So, if a woman had any talent and wished to keep her home and clothe her children, she ought to cultivate her talents, practice them, and keep them well-honed”(67).

She published men as well, including Edgar Allen Poe, who was her friend and editor in the competitor Graham’s Magazine, Washington Irving, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

In the intro to a 1996 Dover Edition of Hale’s Early American Cookery: “The Good Housekeeper,” 1841, Janice Bluestein Longone writes:

“Many people today remember Godey’s simply for its collectible color fashion plates, but in its own day, it was an influential arbiter of social and civic values, women’s rights and responsibilities, literature, language, intellectual life, music, home design and furnishings, fashion and home-making and cooking. On the eve of the Civil War, Godey’s was the most widely read periodical in the United States, boasting 150,000 subscribers”(intro V).

These were the first women’s magazines and women’s magazines today, no matter your opinion of them, are still modeled on them.

Anti-slavery but….

Some of Hale’s views and actions are controversial today. She is often accused of racism. She promoted Colonization—a movement that believed in freeing the enslaved but then relocating them to other locations outside the U.S., including Haiti and Liberia. At the time, this idea had popularity and was one faction of the abolitionist movement.

Read Nasty Women Writers post, Abolitionist Frances Wright (Scottish-American 1795-1892): Bold and Brazen, which covers the topic.

Also, Hale’s reason for promoting a National Holiday called Thanksgiving, in which all Americans would celebrate a shared holiday on the same date, emerged from a desire to address the polarized population of the U.S., the North and South, at the time of the Civil War. She was successful in her letter-writing crusade for the Thanksgiving Holiday, though she did not acknowledge the First Peoples of this land in her pursuit.

She was also not a suffragist and did not commune with the women from Seneca Falls. For all her work to educate women, she did not believe women should have the vote. That or something about the movement itself repelled her. Even among white women, there were and are nuances when it comes to feminism and women’s rights. All women are unique and have their own opinions and mores. Hale moved the needle on a lot of issues that affect women, mothers, working mothers, women writers and editors, and financial aid and assistance for women and mothers. We all still benefit from her work and activism.

Sarah Josepha Hale is a Nasty Woman Writer and Activist.

©Theresa C. Dintino 2026

Works Cited:

Hale, Sarah Josepha. Early American Cookery. “The Good Housekeeper.” 1841. Canada. Dover Publications, 1996.

Fryatt, Norma R. Sarah Josepha Hale: The Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Career Woman. New York. Hawthorn Books, 1975.